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CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation have analyzed the main budgetary and economic effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act and concluded that doing so would probably increase federal deficits over the next decade, whether or not macroeconomic feedback to the budget is included. Such feedback would reduce deficits, but would not offset the increases in deficits stemming from the other effects of repealing the ACA.

Although federal deficits have shrunk markedly in recent years, under current law increased spending for Social Security and major health care programs, along with increasing interest costs, would cause debt to rise steadily over the long term.

The larger deficits would cause federal debt to grow faster than the economy. By 2040, CBO projects, debt would be more than 100 percent of GDP and continue on an upward path—a trend that cannot be sustained indefinitely.

CBO has analyzed the effects on the economy stemming from paths for federal revenues and noninterest spending specified in the conference report on the 2016 budget resolution and how those macroeconomic effects in turn would affect the federal budget.

Of the 224 public laws enacted in 2014, 16 contain intergovernmental mandates and 26 contain private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA). None of the intergovernmental mandates and five of the private-sector mandates are estimated to have annual costs that exceed the thresholds specified in UMRA ($76 million and $152 million, respectively).

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides benefits to low-income households to help them buy food. Some policymakers have expressed a desire to scale back the program significantly to reduce federal spending.

In this report, CBO examines several options for doing so and their effects on households with different amounts of income.